across national, cultural, and linguistic
boundaries. Scholars of philosophy, history,
literature, and multimedia weigh in with
different approaches, but driving this
multidisciplinary design are Coda, an associate
professor of Italian and comparative literature
and associate head of the School of Languages
and Cultures, and Lawton, associate professor
and chair of Italian studies and co-founder and
former director of the Film and Video Studies
program. Both are interested in reaching
beyond the good/evil paradigm that surrounds
the issue.

Lawton, a retired lieutenant colonel in the
United States Army Reserve, is a decorated
veteran who says that during his service, he
witnessed the U.S. military’s lack of attention
to understanding the cultures with whom it
engaged. As an example, he cites the fact that
while attending a year-long course at the
U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff
College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1990,
he received only four hours of training in
coping with local insurgencies. Lawton also
served in Saudi Arabia in the Gulf War, where
he learned that the local military headquarters
was offering free Arabic lessons to American
soldiers. His request to attend the classes on
his own time was denied. He was told that
since the Saudis spoke English, there was no
need to learn the language.

Universities should be involved indiscussions about the causes and implicationsof terrorism, Lawton says, because“throughout the history of humanity, any andall attempts to investigate hegemonic dogmashave been immediately branded as heresy andsuppressed with varying degrees of brutality.The academy is the one place where scholarsmust resist all attempts to suppress freedom ofspeech and inquiry and remain free to questionall assumptions, even those that we mostcherish. It is also the place best suited to forgelinks between disciplines that help understanda complex issue such as this one.”One of the authors in Re-VisioningTerrorism, Hatem Akil, asks all of us to gobeyond a typical perception of the world asa dichotomy of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ and tostop the use of violence as the only way todeter terrorism. “Although this approachis intellectually much more challengingand requires a deep understanding of othercultures and values, we believe that it is morepromising than the one that sees violence asthe only possible solution. By now it has beenamply demonstrated that we will never beable to eradicate terrorism through violence.We have to think in an alternative manner,”says Coda. She and Lawton contend that thefirst step in this direction requires placinggreater focus on the study of other languagesand cultures.

While Re-Visioning Terrorism looks at the
representation of a range of terrorist events,
Narrating 9/11 zooms in on the fiction of 9/11,
especially works that go beyond studying
trauma and the impact of terrorism on daily
domestic life. Co-editors John Duvall, the
Margaret Church Distinguished Professor
of English, and Robert Marzec, professor of
English, also edit MFS.

Duvall’s piece in the collection examines
Jarett Kobek’s ATTA (MIT Press, 2011), a
fictionalized autobiography of 9/11 conspirator
Mohamed Atta. Instead of painting Atta as
the “embodiment of evil,” Duvall says, Kobek
depicts him as a multifaceted individual. The
novel chronicles Atta’s graduate studies in
architecture and urban planning in Germany,
where he penned a master’s thesis on the
ancient city of Aleppo, Syria, and his desire to
rid it of its Western influences, particularly the
high-rise. Kobek’s approach pushes readers to
understand Atta first as an architect and urban
planner before interpreting his actions.

“Often the media doesn’t ask afundamental question that literature asks,”adds Marzec, “Which is, ‘Why do people thinkthe way they do? Why do they behave the waythey do?’ It doesn’t let you follow a humanbeing or culture and see how people come tothink the way they do. So one of the importantthings that a novel does is look at the thingthat you’re inside of from the outside, sothen you can see the absurdity and violenceinherent in the very idea of, say, a culture thatsays it has freedom and other cultures do not.

If you’re convinced that all other cultures arecoming at you to take away your freedom,then you will terrorize other cultures. Youwill become part and parcel of that same kindof logic.”Examining the intersection of terrorismand literature is essential, Marzec says,because literature follows the ways in whicha culture changes how it thinks about itselfand others, tracing how patterns of thoughtchange from one historical moment tothe next.

“Literature can imagine what escapes the
official archive of history,” adds Duvall. “It
can then immediately look for fissures, cracks,
and different ways of thinking. Sometimes,
literature can see around the corner before the
actual news breaks—and get it right.”